


Unstring My Bones

by anextraordinarymuse (December_Daughter)



Category: The Blacklist (US TV)
Genre: F/M, Fix-It, One Shot, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:28:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27536038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/December_Daughter/pseuds/anextraordinarymuse
Summary: This is a repository for my (shorter) one shots, fix its, episode tags, etc. All will be lizzington focused in some way. Each chapter will be titled and any warnings will be listed in the notes.
Relationships: Elizabeth Keen/Raymond Reddington
Comments: 8
Kudos: 73





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> There's no real timeline for this. Sometime after season 3A I guess, but nothing after 3x10 is mentioned (because it didn't happen). Angst with a happy ending.

**Coming Home**

* * *

When the plane touched down at Dulles International, the land was cold and white. There was snow everywhere except the runway; the taxiway and landing lights shone and reflected like Christmas lights. Liz hadn’t seen snow in months. Not since last Christmas, and that realization brought with it a slew of unwanted memories that still bit at her insides despite the time that had passed.

There was no reason for her to be here aside from a niggling feeling in her chest that had refused to leave. She’d been happy on the beach in Faro, drinking cheap Portuguese beer and letting the world pass her by. Liz had stayed there until the unnamed thing in her chest had threatened to drive her crazy with the thought: _go home_. 

In her head, Liz had pretended for almost a full ten minutes that she didn’t know where home was anymore. After all that had passed, all that time, was there anywhere left that felt like home? Could she claim such a place?

Which was ridiculous, of course. There were many places Liz loved – could settle down and happily live out the rest of her life – but there would always be one place foremost in her thoughts whenever home was mentioned.

So, she’d called Red’s – her pilot and arranged to travel home.

Part of her worried about the danger: had it been long enough, had everything blown over by now? Had the city and the Task Force forgotten Elizabeth Keen? They had cleared her name, exonerated her, but had they moved on?

Red did that, Liz’s inner voice corrected. The Task Force only followed where he led, only put the finishing touches on his work. Elizabeth Keen was free to move about the city – the world – because she and Raymond Reddington had made it so.

Besides, Liz told herself, she had learned from Red how to move in dangerous places.

Liz stepped off the private jet and into the frigid D.C air. She tipped her chin down and snuggled further into the puffy winter coat she had donned before leaving the plane and cast her eyes about. A memory came to her, unbidden, of an empty city street at night when she had thought herself alone. Then a bus had passed and revealed in its wake that Red was waiting for her, Dembe a solid and familiar presence behind him.

Red had always been waiting for her.

Liz exhaled sharply and rubbed her gloved hands to dispel the memory. The thought of Dembe had her pulling the cell phone from her pocket to type out a quick text to an unsaved number: _landed safely_. She didn’t wait for a reply and didn’t second guess the number. Some habits were too ingrained to change now, even after … well, even after. Dembe would probably never stop using burner phones, and even Liz had yet to get out of the habit of switching phones every so often. She always had at least two phones on her now, and even more stowed away in odd places just in case.

Red had stayed with her in so many little ways.

Liz shrugged the strap of her duffel bag higher up on her shoulder and headed for the car she had arranged to have waiting. She could have had it waiting right in the hangar with a driver ready to go, but she had decided against it. Liz liked driving, and there were still some things that she wasn’t ready to give up.

There were still some things she was getting used to.

Dembe had been insistent on meeting her at the airport – he was still unhappy with her decision to travel without him, her outright and vehement refusal to let him stay with her as doggedly as he had stayed with Raymond – and it had taken Liz literal weeks to win that argument.

The phone in her hand buzzed as Liz was unlocking the door of the car that would be hers as long as she remained in D.C. She waited until she’d loaded her duffel into the car and had it running to retrieve the phone. The car was warm and had probably been running just minutes before she arrived, because no matter how independent and alone she wanted to be – tried to be – she was still technically the empress of a vast criminal network, and no matter how differently she and Dembe felt about the matter there were still certain luxuries that he would not allow her to forego. It was less exasperating than it should have been or might have been half a year ago.

Dembe had responded to her text. _See you soon, Elizabeth._

Liz smiled to herself. It would be nice to see Dembe again, to know how Isabella was doing and see pictures of his family.

Coming home had been the right choice. She had been alone long enough.

There were safe houses all over the city, and Liz had enough money now to buy a new apartment anywhere she wanted. There was nowhere in the city that she could not go, but Liz knew without thought where she was headed.

Liz’s thoughts bounced from one thing to another as she made the half hour drive to Bethesda. She wasn’t sure how long she would stay in the city, but she was resolved to call on the Task Force while she was here. It had been long enough, she decided, and the past was the past. If nothing else, Aram and Cooper would be happy to see her. Even if they tried to downplay it, Liz knew in her heart that Samar and Ressler would be happy to see her, too.

She was definitely going to have Wing Yee’s while she was here.

When Liz pulled up outside the unassuming apartment complex that was her destination, she heaved a deep sigh. She had parked but made no immediate move to get out of the car. She wanted to be here. This was the only place in the city that she had even considered going. Still, being here now had her heartrate spiking in anxious anticipation.

Liz forced herself to turn off the car and get out. She left her duffel bag in the backseat for now, because there would be time to come back and get it and because she wasn’t even sure if she could manage to stay here yet.

Every step that brought her closer to the front door brought with it a memory: Red in a sharp tuxedo and smiling at her as he led her expertly over the dance floor; the scent of his cologne as he held her; the gravelly sound of her name as it rumbled out of his chest. A short lifetime of memories that played on an endless loop as Liz made her way to that last true bastion of the man who had reinvented her world.

Her hands did not shake as she unlocked the door. She could not fathom how they remained steady when the rest of her was surely trembling, but her hands gave no outward indication of her turmoil. The key clicked in the lock, and she gently pushed the door open, and just like that … there it was. Red’s apartment. Not a safe house, not a building or a room that had been secured for whatever use necessary, but his actual apartment.

Red’s home.

Liz stepped through the entry and shut the door with a quiet click. It was the same as she remembered it: warm brick walls covered in pictures; shelves packed with books … the smell of pecan pie.

“No matter how many times I try,” a voice said from the kitchen, “I can never get this recipe quite right. I have no idea what I’m doing wrong.”

Liz was aware of making a sound akin to choking, but that was odd because she was convinced that she was not breathing.

Raymond Reddington appeared at the other end of the hallway. His suit jacket was missing; his sleeves were rolled up to the elbows and his suit shirt was unbuttoned at the top. He looked just like Liz remembered. His expression was even the same: that intense study of her that she had grown so accustomed to, his head tipped ever so slightly to the right.

Liz could barely see through her tears. “You’re here.” The words were quiet, disbelieving with only the faintest twinge of accusation.

A long pause, and then he answered just as quietly: “I am.”

Suddenly, there was no room in Liz’s chest for her heart. There was only pressure, so much pressure that it ached and started to claw its way up her throat. “It’s been so long.” Her words were thick with tears, breathless and full of emotion, but that one sentence has her rambling. “I thought … I didn’t believe it. There was no body, but we couldn’t find you … Dembe couldn’t find you, and then you didn’t come back … you didn’t come find me.” Liz finally took a halting step toward him, and then another. “It’s been …”

She couldn’t finish the sentence even though it was screaming in her head. The months they had lost, that she had spent alone and believing that Raymond Reddington was dead.

But Red didn’t miss a beat. Her words hadn’t faded when he finished, “…ten months.” His voice wavered on the first word. He had kept his silence as Liz unraveled, had not made a single move to close the distance between them, but she could see her pain reflected in his face. His own eyes glistened with unshed tears though his gaze did not waver from her face.

Liz nodded. Ten months had passed in a world where Red no longer existed, was no longer on the other end of the telephone or next to her in a safe house. Ten months where the man who had ruined her life only to build her a new one was only a memory. Now, here he was, at the other end of the hall. There were so many questions she wanted to ask him. Her tongue was stuck to the roof of her mouth, though, and would not cooperate.

Finally, she took a step forward. The smell of fresh baked pie made the warm air more inviting, and Liz swallowed against the tears. It was nearly Christmas. Red was at the other end of the hall, alive, and it was almost Christmas.

“Where were you?” she managed to ask. She ignored her tears.

Red took a step toward her. He squinted in that way he had when he was trying to think, trying to work out what to do. “Recovering,” he answered. “Mostly. I was found unconscious, nearly dead, and when I finally woke up I … had no idea who I was.”

Liz might be sick. Somehow, the idea of Red being alive in the world, but injured and with no memory of who he was, well … that was worse than him being dead, in a way. Because she’d had no idea he was out there; Dembe had had no idea he was out there. How long had he labored under the illusion that he was alone in the world – that no one had loved him enough to be looking for him?

“You didn’t … remember.” Remember her, or them, or anyone else. Didn’t remember leaving her with a disgusting amount of money and a criminal network to do with as she pleased.

“Not at first,” he assured her.

There was more there, so Liz did what she did best, and pushed. “At first,” she repeated. “And when you did?”

“When I did -.” He couldn’t finish the sentence. She could see the way his throat closed, and he forced himself to swallow, could see the tightening around his mouth and eyes that always heralded his turmoil. “When I did,” he started again, “I knew that Dembe would have followed the protocol, and I thought -.”

No, he still couldn’t say it. She could. “You thought it would be better for everyone if you were dead.”

The weight behind his voice when said, “Yeah,” told her as much as the word itself did.

But he was alive, and it smelled like Christmas morning, and Liz had survived nearly a year in a world without Red – a world where he thought, first, that no one loved him enough to look for him, and then that the world was better off without him.

Liz crossed the distance that separated them. She didn’t hesitate as she did that night outside the jail, or the countless other times she’d been right here. She kept her eyes on his face until she collided into him, until she could press herself into the solid mass of him and _feel_ that he was here.

“Elizabeth.”

“Never again,” she said into his neck, and it didn’t matter that she was sobbing. “Don’t ever leave me again, Red, don’t … we looked for you for months, Dembe called in every favor and we still couldn’t find you.”

His hands were a warm weight through her jacket as he rubbed her back. “Shh. Lizzy, it’s okay. I’m okay.”

“It’s not okay. You were out there for months, alone, with no idea that we were looking for you – that we cared that you were gone, and -.”

Liz pressed herself into him more, until she felt one of his feet shift to keep them balanced. She held onto him as if even the slightest release of pressure would let him disappear again.

She needed to know why he had come back, and how long he’d been here; if he had known she would come looking for him, and if some preternatural sense of him had been what drove her to come home after so long abroad. She had questions.

But first things first. Liz pulled back enough to look him in the face. His eyes were so blue this close, his blonde lashes so long. “I love you.”

He was thunderstruck. It would have been funny if it weren’t so heartbreaking. How long had it been since someone had told Red that they loved him? How long had it been since he’d felt deserving?

After long seconds, all he could manage was, “Lizzy.”

“I love you,” she said again, and then she pressed a soft kiss to his mouth. Then another. “I love you.”

Liz pressed a third kiss to his lips – short, and relatively chaste like the others – but his brain had caught up to the moment and he caught her before she could pull back. There was nothing chaste about the way he kissed her, nothing exploratory or slow. Frantic wasn’t the word for it – desperate, maybe, or … starving.

“Red,” she said finally. “Your pie.”

“Forget the damn pie,” he muttered against her lips.

“No, I mean I think it’s burning.”

Even then, he seemed hesitant to let her go. The fire alarm made it easier when it decided to intervene and force them apart. She could hear Red muttering to himself the whole time as he went first to stop the alarm, and then to the oven.

Liz wiped the tears off her cheeks and went to help. She would ask her questions, and they would figure out a way back from this. Everything was going to be okay.

Because she had endured a world without him; because it was snowing outside, and nearly Christmas, and she had come home to more than she dared imagine.

An irritated huff from Red made her smile. “I think we’ll have to start over.”

“I think that’s a great idea,” Liz agreed.


	2. What of the Firefly

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just love the idea of Red reading Lizzy poetry, okay.

Elizabeth Keen hadn’t thought about Bob Ross in years.

She remembered being a little girl and watching his painting shows on PBS, how happy and kind he had seemed with his easy smiles and bushy hair.

Mostly, she remembered how he’d called mistakes “happy little accidents.”

And it wasn’t that Liz had made a mistake, really – a happy little accident; more that she had found something by accident, and that had led to … well, her newest guilty pleasure.

Which turned out to be listening to Raymond Reddington read poetry.

It had started innocently enough: Liz had come down with a particularly nasty cold. It was spring and mother nature had seen fit to stop leaving frosty kisses all over the city just two short weeks before, which was why she hadn’t been expecting to get sick. One day Liz had been fine, and the next she’d felt a little congested, and the next she had been down for the count.

She’d woken late one morning, a mere twenty-two minutes before she was supposed to be at the Post Office, and had felt like death frozen over. Her head hurt, she couldn’t breathe through her nose, she was chilled and feverish by turns; there was no way she was leaving her apartment. So, she’d called Cooper and let him know that she wouldn’t be in, and she’d sounded awful enough that Harold hadn’t bothered saying anything other than, “Feel better soon, Agent Keen.”

So, Liz had taken the hottest shower she could stand and then dressed in layers – her softest pair of leggings, a thin long sleeve shirt, an oversized hoodie, and her best fuzzy socks – and hunkered down on her couch. She had started a movie and then paused it twenty minutes in to make a mug of tea and the biggest nest of blankets she could manage.

Then, she proceeded to snooze half the day away.

When she woke again – or maybe it was for the third time, Liz had lost count – it was to the sound of someone knocking on the door.

Liz pulled herself off the couch and onto shaky legs. She had the corners of her fleece blanket bunched in one hand to keep it around her shoulders (and if the little girl in her still had thoughts of a super hero cape, well, no one needed to know) as she moved to the door. She didn’t need a mirror to know she looked terrible. Maybe she just wouldn’t answer it.

But one glance through the peephole had her pulling the door open. “Red.”

“Elizabeth. I know it’s customary to bring chicken noodle soup on such occasions but believe me when I tell you that Mama Laura’s southwestern chili is the way to go. If nothing else, it’ll clear your sinuses for a few hours at least.”

Resigned, and too under the weather to argue, Liz stepped out of the doorway to let him in. She poked her head into the hallway after he passed to check for Dembe, but the other man was nowhere in sight. Clearly, Red planned to stay awhile.

Liz closed the door and made her way to the kitchen, but Red waved her away. “Go back to relaxing. I’ll fix you a bowl of chili and some tea. Go on.”

Liz sighed, though it was mostly a necessity because her nose had gotten progressively stuffier and she found it harder and harder not to breathe through her mouth. Which she hated. If she were being honest with herself, she’d admit that the thought of someone being around to take care of her when she felt so terrible was … nice.

Liz burrowed into the couch again. The television was on, though she had no idea what program was on and the volume was so low that she couldn’t hear it. She thought about finding the remoting and switching on something worth watching, but she was already comfortable. Besides, she doubted that she had any of the documentary channels that Red preferred.

She only realized that she’d dozed off again when a soft voice called out to her.

“Lizzie.”

Liz opened bleary eyes. She could just make out Red in front of her and blinked to clear her vision. He gave her one of those small smiles she knew so well; his hand reached for her face, as if to brush against her forehead, or push the hair away from her face, but then he seemed to catch himself. The hand fell away.

“Come on,” he said softly. “I’d be willing to guess that you haven’t eaten anything today, and a full stomach will help.”

Liz wasn’t remotely hungry, but the logical side of her knew that Red was right. She pulled herself into a seated position, the blanket half tangled between her legs and half on the floor, and let him hand her the bowl. The chili was hot but not scorching. She might have taken more notice of that if she’d been feeling better.

Liz did notice that Red didn’t immediately sit down. Instead, he wandered around her living room for a bit. She’d focus on eating her soup – which was delicious, of course – and then look back to find that he’d moved a few feet to study something else. Even sick and at less than her normal mental capacity, Liz found it sweet. Red took in her pictures, decorations, and trinkets as if he could learn something from them, as if he genuinely cared about learning those things.

Which was true, Liz supposed. Red did care. Wasn’t that what he was always trying to tell her?

By the time Liz finished her food, he had found her bookcase. He plucked a book from its shelves and then turned. The moment he realized the bowl in her hands was empty he had crossed the room to take it from her.

“Red,” she chastised tiredly. “I can do that.”

“Of course, you can, but you don’t have to. There’s a glass of water on the end table, but can I bring you anything else?”

She considered the offer. “No, thank you.”

He nodded and disappeared into her kitchen. Liz wasn’t sure why it surprised her that he was being so accommodating, or that he was even here at all. Red had never been shy about expressing his concern for her and her well-being. He was always taking her out to eat (or trying to, at least) or bringing her some new delicacy to try, always trying to make her feel … seen, and cared for.

Even when she didn’t want him to; even when it would have been easier if he didn’t.

Liz had slept most of the day away, yet she was tired once more. She scooted down in the couch until she was laying down again and then pulled the blanket up to her waist and closed her eyes. She could hear Red tinkering in her kitchen for a bit. Then, she listened to his footsteps get closer and smiled a bit when the slightest pressure on her ankle had her moving her feet to make room for him on the couch. He settled against the cushions and then, to her surprise, pulled her legs over his lap.

Liz’s head ached, and she couldn’t decide if she was hot or cold, and her nose was so stuffed that she could hardly breathe. Still, there was the barely discernible hum of the television at low volume, and the occasional shuffle of paper as Red turned the page of whatever he was reading, and it was … peaceful. Easy.

“What are you reading?” she asked eventually.

“Poetry.”

Liz opened one eye in surprise. “I have a book of poetry?”

Red’s shoulders shook with his quiet huff of laughter, but he didn’t look at her. In the quiet of her apartment, Liz thought of their dinner in Montreal so long ago. Her profile had been more accurate than she’d realized. Here was a man who was as comfortable in a tux, entertaining the world’s rich and powerful, as he was here, in an average apartment with nothing but a book and a sick companion.

She closed her eyes again. “Go on then,” she murmured.

“What?”

“Read it aloud.”

“Shall I start from the beginning?”

“If you’d like.”

So, he began. “What of the firefly, the one I love to chase? The old man smiled, love her, he said, but leave her wild …”

Liz let the cadence and melody of Red’s gravelly voice carry her once more into slumber.

* * *

Months and miles later, when that quiet day on the couch felt like a fever dream – when the anger and secrets had given way to something warm and steady that felt too strong to call love – Liz remembered the poem.

There was no wedding, though Red had offered her one. Liz had assured him that she wanted nothing more than this: a quiet evening somewhere beautiful and far from the horrors they’d endured, and a poem.

“Not just any poem,” she explained when Red had flown her halfway around the world. Dusk was falling outside the window, and a dozen candles bathed the walls in gold.

“Oh? Do tell.” He smiled indulgently at her as she moved to retrieve the book that she had managed to hold on to and handed it to him. When he opened to the bookmarked page, Red smiled. “You remember this?”

She had lost count of how many poems he had read to her over the months, and how many of those she had genuinely enjoyed. None of them had the same place in her heart as the first one, though.

Liz wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed a kiss to his lips. “Of course, I do.”

When they finally got to the poem hours later, they were naked, tangled in the sheets and each other, and Red dragged the book from the bedside table. When he was settled again Liz laid her head on his chest and closed her eyes.

“Ready?”

She hummed her acknowledgement, and when he began, she could both hear and feel his words. No, they would not have a wedding, and no one would call her Elizabeth Reddington, but she did not need those things. Everything she needed was right here, under her nose – where it had always been.

“What of the firefly,

The one I love to chase?

The old man smiled

Love her

he said

but leave her wild,

and the old oak tree I love to climb?

Love her, he said, but leave her wild

The bird that sings that song I love?

Love her, he said, but leave her wild

And the wolf that cries to the old joke moon?

Love her, he said, but leave her wild

And the horse that loves to run with storms?

Love her, he said, but leave her wild.

And what of _her_ ,

The one I love most?

And the old man smiled.

Yes, he said,

You must love her too

But love her wild

And she’ll love you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My kingdom for a book of romantic poetry narrated by James Spader.  
> The poem is Love Her Wild, by Atticus.


End file.
